CIO.com

When Apple launched the iPad earlier this year, it was the culmination of fans' long wait for the company to enter the tablet computer market, and the iPad is a revolutionary computing device ushering in a new era of tablet computing. But in 1979, an earlier generation used a different kind of Apple tablet, back when the word meant something else entirely. The Apple Graphics Tablet was designed by Summagraphics and sold by Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL) for the Apple II personal microcomputer. (Summagraphics also marketed the device for other platforms as the BitPad.) To be clear, this tablet was not a stand-alone computing device like the iPad. Instead, it was an input device for creating images on the Apple II's screen, and it predated the Apple II's mouse by six years.

Apple II fan Tony Diaz had an Apple Graphics Tablet on hand at last month's KansasFest. He and Computerworld's Ken Gagne, compared and contrasted Apple's original tablet with the iPad, snapping photos as they went. Despite the three decades of technology advancements that separate the two devices, some fun comparisons are still possible. Join us for a photo face-off between the two tablets.